Mars Hill
by Breaking Bunnies
Summary: " I am ready to meet my Maker. Whether my Maker is prepared for the ordeal of meeting me is another matter. "— Winston Churchill
1. I want that opening line on my grave

_ This story has been cycling through my head for awhile now, though having only recently taken this form. I'll write the original plot later, as a one-shot. What I hope to do is hop back and forth from _are we dead? _to _no, maybe we're just dimension-hopping or something._ We'll see how that goes._

_ And before any of you can complain, __**I'll be including LGBTQ* characters:**__ Roger Jr., who is gay; and Yang and Yuck, one of whom is bisexual and the other of whom doesn't care. More might be added later. Oh, and I'll be taking a more familial look at YinxYuck, because I'm a special snowflake can't cha tell?_

_ Rated Teen for all the usual stuff._

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"_Jeez, someone needs to push the reset button on this planet." _

― Libba Bray, _Going Bovine_

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"There's a midget in the vending machine."

Well damn, he hasn't even stepped off the elevator. Vinnie, that is. The doors ding closed without clipping anyone's wheelchair, walker, or heel, for the simple fact that Vinnie is running holes in his slippers alone, and has been for most of the morning, all while the nurses upstairs decide how much nostrum-adjustment is needed for both to be effectively narcotized. Roger Jr. laugh-sighs (he swears it forms the faintest of white) (quickly locking his jaws back together so they won't shudder) and removes one olive hand from his axilla—but a golden one swats at it.

"I've been sober for about 45 minutes now, Roger."

The pain in Roger's love handle had a dying flare about that time. Coincidence?

Vincent von Graiver wears the pajama-form of his style of loose-fitting overalls, this time felty with no bow-tie or shriner fez hat. The flesh under his eyes have darkened to a mud, puffy, either with open appendectomy's postoperative pain, or with the drowsiness/restlessness side-effects of any on his grocery list of anesthetics.

His voice, however, is less slack; Roger knows that Vinnie, in the midst of narcotism, lets his words meld together into a blob. Like always, any words ending with _r _roll just a bit, or are dropped like ending_ g_'s. _O_'s and long_ i'_s becoming _aw_'s and some _a_'s becoming_ o_'s, liar to _'lawyer'_ and talk to _'tolk'_ and call to _'coll.'_ His throat gets less constricted, however, and it sounds like he's figured out keeping the words out of his nose. Here, (_'hea' _as he'd say it) those traits are back.

"You make quite the compelling case there, Vince, with your bloodshot eyes—"

"I've had a scabbard suck in my lower right abdomen for the_ last thirty-six hours!" _Vinnie hisses.

A few doctors pass by the start of the corridor, soft Croc footsteps heard only because the hospital doors and walls were made thick enough to muffle crying. Roger glances at them and tries to think of why Vinnie's wouldn't be a closed one, with just 12-hour post- pain, like his own. Heck, the only reason Roger is still here is because his dad is at the moment having a kneecap cut open.

Vinnie's surgery was only two days ago, and Roger's yesterday, and did I mention it's ... hold on ... two a.m.? Wow.

Roger thinks Vinnie's a light sleeper anyway, having the faintest notion of a sleepover taking place not even three weeks ago, of his dad slipping away from Mrs. Sisseton's _(1)_ nagging by going to the store, of him using the groceries to bake for them apple the thoughts ebb off.

"It's warmer downstairs," Vinnie resignedly offers. The difference must be ice-and-steam for the kid to notice: his bare arms display thick, coarse brown hair, like that waving past his ears and down the nape of his neck; his frame is thrice thicker, coming up to the chin of Roger Jr.'s 6'1; his nose is a hanging 9.

The elevator plays a muffled instrumental of Daniel Powter's 'Bad Day.'

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"My Lord, worry not!"

Alright, this fist-banging thing isn't working. The power of love has failed.

The underground parking is mostly unused, as is the hallways above, and, surprisingly, even the space outside the doors of the emergency room. The stratum of frosty, nostril-biting air over here smells more and more like cigarette smoke—

_("Like a raven overhead, my lord," he's said before)_

Terry's fist comes to rest gently on the machine. Inside is a boy with cowlicked hair the color of mild seasickness, his cheek flattened against the glass, either tolerant or not noticing the spirals boring into his dorsum.

Terry spreads out his pale fingers and says, dubiously, "I will free you, soon as I can find my..." The mass of that word dissolved on contact with his tongue; he didn't even catch the first letter.

_ I wonder where that other boy is,_ he thinks, the boy who was a bit more than his master's unfortunate new width, who was last seen disappearing around the corner one Coke machine down from the snacks. That's the one that's added nudity to its otherwise conservative inventory of natural-juice chewies. A sign, hanging on now by one square of tape, says, 'This Machine Will Steal Your Money (Like My Thirty-year-old Son)', covering the lower half of Yuck's face.

Yuck, with a light dusting of freckles on his cheeks, and a...eh, there's not many nice ways to put this. Terry immediately thinks _if someone with Parkinson's drew a circle,_ even though he himself looks like someone gave a stick of string-cheese legs.

Terry had awoken to darkness, then a lighter, more grey-brown kind once he figured to blow his chestnut bangs out of the way. (Why he suddenly felt like he was under a coffee table again (or why _again _even needed to be added on), he doesn't know but still) He looked round: a few feet away, an entry booth attendant was fast asleep. Paint had been applied to the tags defecating some of the support columns, though the vandalism still worked its outline through.

And in a clear case of déjà visité, Terry felt he knew where the broken machines across the garage were. He did stumble with his poor-sightedness, but he knew all the same.

First, he tried looking for some kind of break in the device's back, and found his glasses sitting there by the plug as nicely as when he sets them by his lamp.

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"Unless he's also fairy-sized, how're we gunna get him out?"

"Crowbar—or, _or,_ we demagnetize his atoms, draw them out, and then reassemble them with duct tape. Duct tape heals all wounds."

"Will it make me feel secure in my masculinity?"

"Nope, it would just make you look stupid. Now, do you have any ideas?"

_"Hmmm_...How about we throw a Molotov cocktail at the vending machine, pick up his ashes, then sacrifice a janitor to the gods to resurrect him?"

"My dad keeps some tire irons under the seats in all our cars; we could just use that."

"_Why _would your dad do that?"

"'Just in case,' he said."

The door pings open; Vinnie hands him the keys out of his overall pocket.

"My lord!" a yell comes, making the elevator crew pause. "You've awaken! I have devised a plan to free you, worry not! I just need to find my— a-a tire iron, yes, and I'll bust you out!"

Eyes close again, rolling back and forth his shoulder joints. The spiral shelves, contrary to popular belief, have been bent and snapped where Yuck's been sleeping, black plastic scattered at his feet. _I didn't know my skin is made of titanium; I guess that's pretty nice. _

"What, my lord?"

When he sees the pink of his borrowed skin, as if to give a nod to popular belief, things_ do _dig into his back. As he nearly jumps out his skin violently enough to check and see if his bones still have the same serial numbers.

"My lord, I have no idea what any of those words mean."

German words_, _which by merely speaking them has deepened his voice like making bitter chocolate even more-so by leaving out the milk_ (2)_. Regarding the drops of blood now slipping down his back as if it were mere water, Yuck leans his head back against the glass, straining his eyes at the figures coming into his peripheral vision.

Black eyes and burnt sienna hair? That's Berger, all right. He wears a muscle shirt and sweats, barefooted compared to the seal-shaped mules of his friend, and his usual half-circle-shaped head has been transformed to one more box-ish. Maculae, unlike Yuck's own, is of inkblots instead of blood against his skin. A muted look of recognition sparks in Roger's eyes as they travel down the situation—and then he covers his mouths and guffaws.

"Oh, he's naked too, did I forget to mention," Seal boy says, having covered his eyes as they rounded the corner. "My parents car is somewhere over there. The red one with the hula monkey and fuzzy dice."

Yuck's seen this kid before: brown eyes, Bear accent, where?—Vinnie. The circus performer in the Woo Foo army who can't...couldn't_ something_ like everyone else. Something involving a yak piñata, though now that he can remember this detail the rest is easy enough to guess.

His smile turns awkward at Terry and Yuck, the former who, realizing himself, jumps behind the machine. He asks, practically shouting, "Speak English?"

Yuck would reply with "Compared to you," but the words get eaten and spit out crudely by the translator stuck in his throat.

Vinnie's eyebrows raise, with the smile twisting in modifiers. "Do you understand a 'yes' or 'no' question? I'll give ya a hint: one you nod, one you don't." He takes his hands off his handles and begins to approach.

"You'll understand a fist to the face, soon enough!" Terry yells, jumping out, pointing one finger at Vincent as the other hand cups cover on his genitalia, even though there isn't anyone interested in looking south.

Yuck clears his throat a few times, and upon hearing his regular, clogged-nose voice fail to return, promptly braces himself on the glass and head-butts it. Terry gasps (my lord, my lord, Sweet Shooda I never took you as religious), throwing himself right with palms colliding with the rocking machine. He's breathing a lot more than the injured guy is, that's for sure.

A hand prodding on his shoulder blade. Vinnie has closed his eyes instead, head turned, one hand holding his suspenders and the outstretched other his singlet undershirt. "Use it like an apron," he offers. "Germany here can borrow something from Rog' when he gets back."

Yuck, rubbing the stars out from the inside of his eyelids, hears himself mutter, "Good, fine," in the voice he was born with. "Terry?"

Oh, these big, hopeful eyes. "Yes, my lord?"

"Shut up."

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Alois, he had told them, and Terry had listened enough not to question. Or he didn't remember Yuck by any name much beyond 'lord.' And, despite having set his head right (as right far as it would go with him) he still he went with the German pronunciation .

"AH-loys," he says again, and it tastes fine on his tongue. But where had it come from?

From in-between his ears, the voice of Yang's qualities, still low, still in Unnamed Common Language (TM), pipes up: "Probably the ole' MPD line again."

The Yin's, still sounding like the origin trying too hard to be a pirate, replies, "I wonder why it's so beyond people to think that maybe you're just a douche. Sure, 'Upstanding Yuck' wasn't the best writing logically..."

It's more than they usually say and already it's grating his nerves, so rolling over in Vinnie's hospital bed Yuck turns on the little abreast radio-clock. Immediately, acoustic guitar and other strings start to pour, a male softly talking about breaking clocks and last first kisses, is it over now, hey is it over now..._(3)_

A soothing song thus far, Yuck nonetheless smashes a crater into the device, keeping his fist rested in the dent out of sheer laziness. Terry will be back with Vinnie and Berger and food and some aspirin soon enough, after all. Once the pain that had suddenly began to snake along his pelvis and up and down his spine has been chased off, he can get out of Vinnie's overalls and start making further assessments.

"I think that answered my question." Girl-part says; then thankfully neither says anymore.

Yuck cycles a deep breath through his lungs. Oh, Honey Bunny, "I think third-grade spelling is the only way we could beat the record on the pretension-meter, now. Or by killing ourselves."

X'X'X

(1) Yeah, Roger is Native American now. All information on Native American names came from native-languages.o r g [ slash ] original.h t m. Apparently in the original language the name means "Running Waters," and oh irony because Roger's species can breathe fire. The name 'Graiver,' while a Jewish surname, apparently has no meaning. All I got where genealogies.

(2) I'm sure you can all guess what he'd be saying. You can watch YYY in German on YouTube from user Jannicify.

(3) The song playing here is 'Inevitable' by Anberlin, and lyrics in question are: _I wanna break every clock/ The hands of time could never move again./ We could stay in this moment (stay in this moment)/For the rest of our lives./ Is it over now hey, hey, is it over now...?/I wanna be your __last first kiss/_

And in case you haven't already guessed, Yuck's last sentence is a _Romeo and Juliet _throwback. I can only imagine how much he'd rage-quit that play.


	2. Sssh, my soaps are on

"Heroin overdose, autoerotic asphyxiation, execution at the hands of the Kouprey_(1)._..." He starts when his fingers again brush as they're ticking off the nigh-endless ways he could have made his way here, into this little monochrome store, something fleshy—a fifth finger. Like (no, exactly) of Manotaur infamy.

He's a lot like the Manotaur now, for worse or worser, aside from the horse legs and baldness. His scalp is, for now, covered by a thick cowlick of Dodger blue. Thinner fur also covers this strange skin, stretched taut over the bones as if it were glued on without any muscle in-between, like a sandwich with just mustard and cheese. That's the first thing he'd seen when they'd awoken: no dojo, no weapons, and no panda, being awaken by being suddenly, unexplainably aware of the purple strip binding their wrists together.

I'm sure we can all agree that Yang is a lagomorph of logic.

A girl, strawberry split-ends tickling her under the chin, continues searching a desk with care equal to handling eggs, as to not spill the heaps of envelopes and file folders. She, too, is naked, minus the ribbon loosely tying back her hair and the shawl hanging off of her shoulders, from when she'd fallen back asleep and Yang had draped it over her. It's almost just another night before exams, because both wake up early, eat a bit (in this case, a stale hero sandwich they had found in a lunchbox in the stockroom), Yin study/doodle and Yang play muted Y-Cube.

Her eyes, if he could see them through the walls and over the piles, are dulled and the edges darkened.

"Yang," she says loudly, as if again reminding him to cap the toothpaste, or to clean out the leprechaun nests in the outhouse. "We don't have any solid evidence that this is limbo."

"C'mon, Yin! We go to Earth once, it blows chowder, an' then one day we wake up on Earth, as the very creatures that make it suck. That sounds like Limbo t' me."

Way to celebrate their first victory over the new Nightmaster, _wooooo,_ party. From atop a shelf of long-johns, out he pulls another handful of cloth, thusly pushing its old packaging off his legs. The spoils of his toiling quest through rack and through bin: blue and pink jeans, a baseball cap and a beret, and white sweaters. The mock bed he'd arranged for them, a pile of bubble coats, which he tosses these on.

Current retail price on a twin-sized mattress, from the coffee-stained newspaper on the register: $279

Their current funds, including safe and said register: 230 paper-pieces. Most, he's noticed, have ones on them.

"So far, I've found what seems to be a map of this city, and have brainstormed a few possible answers as to how we got here. These bills all have a return address to 'Mars Hill, CT'—whatever that stands for. We'll need to visit this park here, on the west outskirts, to thoroughly test out all our skills again and see how well these hominid bodies handle magic." The knots in her rhomboid pop undone as she stretches.

Her skin is slightly pale, her twin's a tad tanner, but both have scars cleared of their fur bandages—Ugly, old scars, for the most part they might have cut themselves with pocket knives as tots. "Also, wouldn't a more logical conclusion be that we died in battle?"

Yang glances at the clock above the entrance's bell. Only been awake for two hours now and it's already their lunchtime; If they're lucky, someone might've left a few sodas and pizza slices in that mini-fridge under the desk. And a plastic knife to cut off mold.

"But that wouldn't be _ironic, _Sis," he replies. "Do you wanna see the tow truck guy get offed by a car accident, or a heart-attack?"

"Both, if the car's new. But how do you think I died, then?"

"Nail polish fumes." Instantaneously.

A sharp, quivering coo when her soles hit the linoleum, wiggling her new toes—such a strange thing about humans, their split-up feet. "Nail polish fumes?" She echoes back. Her outstretched hand is quickly met by polyester, and hastily she starts pulling on the sweater.

"Yep. Can't you just_ smell _the carbon monoxide in 'em?"

She hobbles on her rather accurately-sized jeans. Sighing as she buttons up, her fingers clammy. "My death is so anticlimactic compared to yours—why does that always happen?"

Gone she goes, into the storeroom. Yang following, shadowing the doorway with the light from the whispering ceiling fan and the sun managing to fight through half-drawn blinds.

"Whaddaya mean?"

Yin is on her tip-toes, flanked by overflowing dust receptacles and two-months-outdated fashion. She pulls down a box, another from the shelf under it, two more. She turns only to stack them and then to steal to another wall, repeat previous line. "The series was supposed to be the tale of our fantastical bildungsroman, and yet I've always been treated as the deuteragonist."

"Yin, you can't insult me with words I don't know."

Be polite and hide the smile. "I mean I feel as though I've been treated as second-best." A finger towards the first stack. "Who knows how humans measure their feet, but go ahead and try those out."

"Thanks. And, to answer your question, it's because you pretty much are."

_A duck is a duck no matter the state. _

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The city, aside from it's more sky-hungry, reflective design, and the lack of appreciative (if stalkerish) crowds, is...the same. They get stares for their scars, children pointing them out as if it's the second coming of the Messiah. Then they all continue about their day, with dreary, washed-out skin tones and sweaters.

The majority of the roads are covered by one collective tunnel, with sidewalks elevated high enough to offer some hero-esque jumps across truck roofs. Fluorescent burns the eye; People who haven't showered in a week mingle in the air with perfumed-drenched ladies; Cement is strained umber, with infuriating litter trim. Down below, the sides of the wall are occupied by the fast, methodical board/unboard of buses. Entry holes, framed by jarringly-bright route maps, don the backgrounds of these stops.

You Are Here*, Entry A, 156 Lowery Street.

Yang is practically dancing through the crowds—scratch that, he is, but with the group of late-teens instead of with her and an 16bit floating primate. Yin half-thinks to join her elder (habitually she titters at the notion) brother. But she knows she can't go running off like a child fed up with holding her mother's hand. Despite whatever the most famous WooFoo proverb has to say, both might and magic are useless unless you use some rationale.

First step in battle-planning: Observe.

The twins had quickly discovered that the writer has going to be a total bitch and took away their hammer spaces. So the money is in a ziplock baggie, inside a grocery bag, inside her hat.

Feels like she's going to spiral into a paranoia darker than night, alright, creeping up on her with thick fingers. She's taking the hat off, holding it a bag—she's bundling the little paperstack in her fist and then twirling the hulu-hat about—she's ducking away from her brother's occasional swipe with more might than is necessary.

_For someone who helped in the second takedown of the original Nightmaster, you sure are stressing over this. _

Yes, yes, and her nerves seem to exaggerate her magic, which pushes forth at every and each new cell, each proton, each composing element. Stretching her, like a trampoline, yet she's compressed.

She needs a book. A nice, all-inclusive account of the rise of the Invisi-Goths and their eventual fall to the third-niece-removed of masters Wooda and Shooda, who drowned her kins' nemeses in a sudden, overwhelming flood of hyperborean water. _(2)_

"You mind?"

A little tug on the back of her sweater—_the sound of a piglet joyously squealing as it tested out its new wings_— "You left the tag on. Sorry, I'm kinda OCD about stuff like that."

A bus engine screeches in pain.

Yin... turns round, despite the protesting, rusty gears of her legs. _Maybe we are in Limbo. _

The boy behind her recoils, sucks air through clenched teeth. "Ouch. What happened?"

_Nail polish always did smell awful. _

A humanoid figure stands there holding two black backpacks. Green eyes,—no pumpkin—tracing her largest scar down through patches of burnflesh along her clavicle. Same knobby knees and cerulean hair and light green skin, wearing the same orange assemble. And here is she, a lump of a slice running from the bridge of her nose to somewhere hidden by her collar. Not to mention _("It's Bugly Yinnie!") _the other plethora of cuts and burns peppering her visage like freckles.

(Oh mother of Foo she's just been standing like a ditz for so long)

He sniggers, readjusting the heavy pack on his shoulder and the smaller on his elbow. If Yin were listening, she'd hear her brother conferring with a synthesized falsetto about five feet behind her, pointing such way and chuckling. Changing direction as the bus inexplicably catches on fire.

They jump, and with a chill Yin notices how the people around this Brett (not Brett, Brett isn't real, Brett was a robot shell with the hands tucked away in her useless underwear drawer back home) take no notice.

He calls out something. And his voice, which relays not ting nor beep of its mechanical source, which sounds like what a nice mocha-latte tastes. Coming out in the faintest clouds, carbon dioxide and water and heat.

X'X'X

(1) _(from Wikipedia:) _A kouprey is a wild, forest-dwelling ox found mainly in northern Cambodia, but also believed to exist in southern Laos, western Vietnam, and eastern Thailand. For all intents and purposes I've nonetheless casted them as the Triple Y-verse North Koreans.

(2) In case none of you remember/have seen it, the Invisi-Goths, Wooda, and Shooda were introduced in the episode 'Doomed to Repeat It.' The _Visigoths_ established their kingdom in present-day Spain and some of southern France, so of course we have the Mediterranean sea and the Atlantic ocean.


	3. Two nerds

_This isn't a very good nor important chapter for how long I'd not only waited to start it, but how long I fussed over it. Still, I think the quasi-silly backstory makes up for it slightly. And the question at the end is something I've been wondering on-and-off since I watched_ Upstanding Yuck.

_Four things: The excerpt here at the beginning is because I didn't want to extend the ending scene, nor add a tiny flashback later; speaking of which, flashbacks will begin and end with X-X-X-X; and this chapter contains lots of spoilers for Philippa Gregory's book_ Widearce, _and slightly less for George Orwell's_ 1984.

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_"Before beginning the exam, pupils are reminded that grading for this exam is based on one's ability to clearly and concisely present and discuss knowledge, not just the knowledge itself."_

_"Name."_

Yuck.

_"Describe one of the five main contributions to Prediction that took place during the Pink era, between 1600 A.A and 1700 A.A."_

Cassandra Dugongs— not the one known for her World Cup Predictions, but that one's lesser known great-great-great-aunt, whom many readers will probably recall for her part in the Great Gold Guns scandal at the very end of the Pink era. The Chosen One Checklist is a clipboard archived in one of Shacklton's plethora of underground chambers, designed to help the public weed out the shouts of faux Predictioners, as at the time many religious leaders, claiming to having been Chosen by the Sun Trio or some other such deity, were forming cults.

Now, this may have backfired on her a bit; the Checklist was craved and inscribed on golden tablet, which only added against her during the trails after the GGG scandal.

For the Checklist itself, it's been argued over just how many of these qualities one has to fulfill in order to be Chosen. The contents of the Checklist are written thus, verbatim:

'A) At least one dead/otherwise missing-in-action parent(s)/guardian(s); a tragic past'

'B) Defining physical featuring, often connected with tragic past'

'C) Revelation to Chosen One will come out of nowhere'

'D) has one flaw/crutch that the antagonistic forces could use to coerce or willingly draw the Chosen One to the Dark Side or otherwise aide their dark, villainous cause'

—_First-Year End-of-Course-Exam, Excerpt, Graded '4'._

X'X'X'

Back at Camp,—and its collaborating school F. Shacklton—he's always been pinned as a delusional loser.

Delusional in that he sees himself ten rungs on the social ladder higher than reality: He raises his hand too often in class, with mediocre understanding of the material; he looks hurt if the popular table hasn't reserved him a seat, as if it doesn't every single other day; he strides ahead of everyone, swinging his arms about, which makes his robes sounds like a strong wind. Then he decides to crank his Snobby Common Language (TM) accent up to Level 11.

But now that isn't the case. Terry simply has no idea what to do, what to say. His head throbs weakly, little pains crawling up his feet and calves like—no, wait, he had stomped through an anthill. Cheese stick body and pepperoni legs.

From the signs out here and there along the streets, it seems like sun-blocks with ridiculously high SPFs are as essential as food—like, you know how many calories are in a Big Cheese over at Wickie's? It's that kind of ridiculously high. Coupled with the fact that there's not a single cloud in the sky, though it's been a relatively chilly day with the wind.

The city, while drenched in cement, does manage some green space: a little nondescript office building with a sign too faded to read, out behind the shopping complex and its twisting roads like those colorful waiting-room tables. The poor thing has vines up to your neck and tall, thick-haired trees cutting into its blocks, swallowing up the wire fence.

And a manhole covered like a pit-trap.

Which Yuck wants him to pull off; to conquer the alligator kingdom and clog the city into submission, he'd said. He may or may not be serious, since he does have this deep-seated vendetta against the scaly creatures, something he'd made apparent for the one he'd sat next to in Shacklton. Never why, though, and Terry has never been curious enough to ask.

Yuck's body had been found at the bottom of the main floor stairway, his freckles drops of lava on his boiled face, and he has since developed this habit of pushing himself until he falls over. They'll walk, the twenty dollars Vinnie and Roger Jr. had wanted to give them—which Yuck had vehemently denied—getting sweat-soaked from its place under Terry's left foot (shoes they had both 'borrowed' from the hospital's locker room), until Yuck needs to lean against something, ere his legs buckle as if his bones were strings the puppeteer suddenly decided to loosen.

Terry knows his lord well enough to not suggest going back to the hospital to swipe a wheelchair.

(Heck, why not see why he can't move his lordly toes ("like it's been Foo-frozen"), or why he woke up babbling bass German, or have examined what he calls "a mutant worm.")

It's a funny feeling, really—he knew, just _knew_ of Yuck and his own willing subservience, the way he knows how to sign his name in the dark. But that 'w' word, 'wand', that he'd needed to ask about, but when he had a mental cog near-audibly shifted back into its rightful position.

And if there was any doubt, considering the whole 'Ahloys' schtick he'd given their greeters back there: after they'd eaten and hydrated him, the boy who called himself Ahloys went to the bathroom. And not even a minute later there came a loud complaint of, "There is a mutant worm-lookin' thing growing out of my crotch-er-ler region."

Now, his lord lays upside-down along an aslope rock, blood reddening his cheeks. He rubs a hand over one as he uninterestedly asks what Terry is waiting for.

"Well..." How can Terry explain how his nose can stand a lad aptly named but not a sewer out in an unnamed city in probably-Hell? Just...'like Winston with rats' will best explain it, but O'Brien is Yuck's favorite character. "How about I try making a wand?"

There's a huffsnort, a quirked eyebrow, but he doesn't mean it meanly.

X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X-X

Another reason Terry has never been popular is because he has something to pride: His great-great-grandmother, Cassandra Dugongs, who for a decade made bank predicting the winners of the World Cup down to the difference. Now she, as well as all the other Camp and Shacklton staff members who banked with her, are long dead, and thus-far the subsequent members of the Dugongs-Otter family have yet to do her name justice.(1)

Of course, that isn't stopping any of them from trying.

"And I can prove it!" he'd said.

"So do it."

(Due to memory bias, whether or not he was nearly salivating at this will be left for the reader to decide.)

There is something else you should know: The library of Shacklton has a couple of... oddities. Unlike the rest of the school, wherein paintings hung only in common rooms (like at Camp, they were rumored to be named by either the founder's eleven-year-old kid, or by bullocks translations of the original Ye Ole) and sneezed if directly spoken to, the paintings in the library would quickly look around for a staff member and then make slow slashing motions across their throats.

Paperback books also had a reputation for opening up hidden chambers if pulled, both in the library itself and around campus. Such connections were ever cycling about, though a convoluted map would be acquired from one of the hunchback trolls that hung round in the cafeteria, if they were serving beer cake that day/

So on one particularly magical Tuesday, they did. Terry pulled out from the top of one of the two-otter-high shelves a history of something-horrendously-long, nearly getting himself squashed.

Yuck was waiting there, scowling. A good chunk of the wall separating one hallway from the Arithmany classroom had crumbled, the old bricks falling without stirring nor creating even a single speck of dust. The blackness that laid inside the hole seemed impenetrable past the first few inches.

But his lord had simply stuffed one hand and the toothpick it held into the pocket of his maroon school robe, had clicked two fingers of the other. And with the tennis-ball fire that spun above his palm, stepped inside. With every move forward, thrice the bricks moved back to starting position. With not a comment nor curious glance from the few students passing though, Terry stepped inside— and soon enough tripped on what felt to be a small beetle. Because of nerves, of course.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

If you stopped to listen, you would hear the chatter of the leprechauns. Spare iconic ones like Pete of Na-Ka-Mas, they're an exceptionally small species, just a wee taller than a Smork. _'And they bite'_ Terry thought, mentally reciting his last oral report. _'But generally only if you step on one, in which case they swarm like angry wasps.'_ Every step the otter took, about a trip as he tried to avoid that, likewise trying to keep up with the flame that marked his master's brisk pace.

Leprechauns are also known for trying to kill sleeping travelers with pogo sticks, but at that moment it seemed they were comfortable merely keeping aim at the travelers' faces. Quick, shadowy jabbing motions whenever Terry caught sight of one in a crevice in the wall.

Yuck harshly whipped his robe out from under Terry's foot, but he didn't mean it harsh.

Terry is thirteen, let's be clear. If he stares into darkness long enough, be it in the dorms, or now, with a pool of light so bright even the dust in the air is visible, it'll begin to distress him. Which is sad, because again, thirteen. Terry could feel some of his violet fur come off between his fingers, chaffing raw the nape of his neck. Words fell off his tongue, words to fill the space. "Um, my lord?"

"Yeah?"

"I've been wondering if you've ever wondered about—well—how you could be as you are..."

"The powerful combination of all that's "bad" in Yin and Yang?"

It hadn't taken long after meeting him for Terry to find that one out. But his lord's air quotes round 'bad' (the fire shifted with his hand; one green-imp or two hissed as though this was a personal offense), that was new. Sure, Terry had doubted the claim's likelihood (he will never say the word 'lied' and 'his lord' in the same sentence, no, never), since they met by him having decided, un-dared, un-no-other-option, to sit next to Terry at lunch and in Herbology. Sure, Terry was known to do a little extra for the most popular kids— more elbow grease poured into a team project, extra quarters given out interest-free —but that wasn't it. He hadn't done any favours yet.

"You have?"

"It's the whole basis for my existence, so yes, you could say I have. What do you think?"

The stupidity of what he'd said silencing him—and again, 'lie' and 'my lord' will never be together.

"C'mon now!" Yuck shouted, his voice echoing as they rounded a corner.

Terry raised his head from his feet, cleared his throat. "Well, I do enjoy your company, my lord. But awhile ago I read this book my mum had lying around, and the narrator there has a hand in her own father's death, has two bastard children with her brother, makes his wife keep one, then has her own husband committed to a mental asylum when he cops to her bull."

"But you still read pretty far in," his lord stated in an over-exaggerated, patronizing tone, throwing a thin curve of the mouth over his shoulder.

Terry sucked a breath through his teeth, but eventually conceded, "I'm an adolescent boy; it had a lot of sex. I'm more okay with it than I'll probably be at thirty."

Yuck tittered, sounding like a snort. He snapped his fingers then, once, twice, made his flame elongate and swirl up with flecks of jade spitting outwards. "Well, like I said, I've thought it over quite a bit. First: a lot of negative qualities are just positive ones taken to an extreme, like my aggression being the extreme of being assertive. Then plenty more positives are deemed wrong because they're put towards a moral set you don't share. I think there's something to call that—'something-something' error.(3) It's been awhile."

"You're into psychology?" Terry asked, his hands slipping into his pockets now, almost lolling back now in posture. His lord's voice, however nasal or fickle, is strangely calming whenever he starts talking like this, like an intellectual, or like a passionate nerd—

"Were. Kinda still am, but then I got s'more dystopias to read. _1984_'s been the most helpful, and I jus' love this little bit at the end: okay, so Winston is being tortured, and O'Brien asks 'im why he thinks they're runnin' the government the way they do. He's 'Oh, you— you wanna s-save us from ourselves, 'c-'cuz we can't handle freedom for ourselves—' and O'Brien is just, 'No, no, we're just assholes.'"

His smile was bright, words fast, orange eyes dancy. He was also a master at changing voices, did you know, a trait which Terry had always been slightly envious of, though the thought of voice-acting had never entered his mind before.

"Do you think self-awareness is a positive quality, my lord?"

Echoing laughter and high-pitched hisses.

X'X'X

(1) This is loosely based on Sybill Trelawney from the Harry Potter series (surprise, surprise), who's great-great-grandmother, also named Cassandra, was a famous Seer. In Greek mythology, Apollo gifted a Cassandra with the ability to see into the future, but when she rejected him, cursed her and her descendants to never be believed.

All knowledge of the Harry Potter series comes from reading fanfics and wiki-abuse.

(2) For the curious, what Yuck is thinking of is the fundamental attribution error— and he's using it wrong. The fundamental attribution error is when you observe something about someone else's behavior and assume it's an inherent part of their personality, instead of looking at it from their point-of-view, where situational factors are more easily seen.


	4. A Child's First Trip to the Library

Dear Diary,

Mood: apathetic.

My life is spiraling out of control.

The quality of my already-mediocre work is also spiraling, but at least no one's reading far enough to notice.

XXXXXxXXXXXX

In normal circumstances, jumping across automobile tops would be no problem, and he was about to do it, too—until someone damn near pulled his arm out of its socket, the ceiling becoming gray from dark, ugly brown too swiftly for it to be anyone other than his sister. Who is still, bring her other hand around for a strong double-armed toss.

Gravel tinged with a pinch of something more metallic in taste rushes past his lips. Pain, flaring up on his knees and the ankle he had banged on the edge of the walkway platform, having just jumped when her hand had closed around his wrist. North his head, however, leaves rustle and wood snaps. Before he can fully process any of this sensory input, Yin is pulling him into that sound, and the shiny, scratchy leaves decide to decorate his hair, the thumb's-width branches pressing into his rump like the seat of an unfinished chair.

Yang spits the aggregate and droplets of blood into Yin's face. Rubs the back of his hand over his mouth, which stings, but is no longer bleeding more than a speck, sputtering out the rocks' taste.

The crook of Yin's elbow pulls him in for a kiss. _"Sssssssh!"_ She hisses, chin planted on scalp.

They can hear Brett's echoing footfalls stop, hear him using a few colorful words for the blue-haired freak who'd just punched him square in the jowl. Yang imagines the incisor that's now resting abreast of one the exits (five-point-three feet in any direction—new world record!), a grin growing against the fabric of the stolen sweater (which they can both agree are starting to feel like they were made of Eradicus' clipped toenails). They listen to Brett curse for half a minute longer, before that synthesized voice the second chapter's narration mentioned only passingly enters the scene, asking Brett if he'll get his tooth put back in or if the voice can try to pass it off to the tooth fairy as his own.

"_Tha hi,_" —Yang nips at Yin's skin like a hamster who now longer wants to be held—"That's, uh..." He snaps his fingers, "Dip, I think. That robot kid Zarnot sent once to kill me."

Yin's chin inches up until it's on the corner of his forehead. "Oh, is he..." Leans forward, her chest forcing her brother's head down until his button nose is level with the black space covering his..new equipment, let's call it. Yin notes absently, "I don't think human skin is supposed to be gray...ish. It might just be the light."

Yang murmurs something that sounds like 'fun'; the leaves swing back as Yin asks, "What?"

He looks upward (or north, given that he doesn't have eyes in the back of his head, a level three Woo Foo spell)—he'll tell her later, which translates roughly to 'haha,_ no." _He must preserve her innocence.

So he just grunts, "Would you mind?"

She slides off to the side, awkwardly turning one of her knees to fit them in the gaps in the roots. He comes up arcing his shoulders back, hearing pops. His wrists are at his axilla, and since he can't stretch his arms out he just curls and uncurls the way one would to flick water at someone after one's washed their hands.

"Are dead people s'posed to feel pain?"

Yin rolls her eyes, and instead explains why she wouldn't let him to a presumed, _actual _demise. "I don't know if our more advanced abilities transferred over into these bodies, and I didn't want to try magic in a crowd."

"Insert Brett joke."

Blue orbs side-eye.

He half-heartedly shrugs. "I'm not proud of the material I'm thinking up right now. Does being dead have the, that,..." He makes a downward slop with his arm. "Minus—thing—with humor?"

"Negative correlation. And you can't decease what was nonexistent in the first place."

"Op, ten points for Yin for originality."

Her fingers again push aside the little, diamond-shaped leaves of the hedge, revealing the ending of the argument she'd only been paying vague regard to: (?)ip and the Brett look-alike bickering over why (?)ip can't auction off the tooth—the tooth fairy isn't real—your eyebrows aren't real—

"You're the worst brother ever!" The kid is shouting, hefted up by the back of his denim kiddie-leash, the tooth held away by Brett's other hand.

"Hashtag: first-world-problems."

He hasn't changed at all, really.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Neither of them have many memories from their early childhood, to the surprise of a grand total of no-one.

A few, of course, and one of the more vivid ones is of when Yang made her film his death—well, 'film,' in the loosest, lowest-frame-rate sense.

They were about seven, and a guy who called himself a fraction had given Yang a throwaway camera outside one of the town's pubs, his two heads rather loudly prattling off about Go see the world kid, Life is too short. When he came back to...wherever they had been living, he smelled of cigarette smoke and faintly of alcohol, said he had learned how to play pool and had beaten one guy in particular out of everything he had in his pockets.

Yang had shoved the camera in her face, took off the only piece of clothing he ever has in any of these early memories—a threadbare, dull crimson sweater—, and made her fill up the roll with quick shots of him "pulling" out a stick that had somehow impaled him through the stomach, trying to stop the bleeding with his clothing.

"Our town had some weird drunks," Yang says now.

This started his 'hype-na-go-get delusions' (Yin's skin crawls with embarrassment for her younger self's stupidity), which left the both of them with their share of bruises: Yang, because he kicked out during these regular episodes; Yin, because she had to keep it even.

She hisses-screams his name and the reminiscence and present sensory input flooding Yang's brain coalesce for a spilt second, Is Yin fourteen or six right now?

Either way, he pauses, his fingers tucked in the wide gaps in the metal of the vent-screen, hair shooting up like spikes but falling back just as suddenly, like those tall bag-people car washes use. Maybe if he pretends himself to be stone she won't be able to sense his presence.

She pokes him on his thigh (so it isn't creepy). "Don't do it, Yang."

"How are we s'posed to get out, then? Are we sleeping in here, too?"

"You just wanna steal some kid's phone while he isn't looking and fill it with a bunch of stupid pictures of yourself."

"You can't possibly know that," he says cooly, though while not looking at her but ahead, where some yard away a roach follows the ventilation shaft into a turn.

"Considering we spent the first chunk of this scene talking about a camera, yes, I think I can."

He glances back at his sister's scowling visage, and then plops his own down on the screen, cool against the toasty, light-armpit-sweat temperature of the rest of the shaft. Looking out the slit, he can see rods jutting out of the circular wall, coming together in the middle of room, right under where he's looking by a yard or two, to form a cradle for a globe about twice the size of a beach ball (but Yang can see from here that it's made of paper mâché).

The brown smudges on it look strikingly like their own continents back home, the way two siblings might look similar enough to just not be identical twins.

He scoots to the other side of the vent to let Yin have a look; She makes a brief, bemused hum-noise.

"Can I steal his phone to order pizza?"

Hum-noise. Cocks head slightly.

"Glad we could agree on that."

XXXXXXXXX

The lucky birthday child of the head librarian stares up at his mother's perplexed face with such awe and elation, she can't possible decline pulling out her wallet, at least not without the reasonable possibility of a call to Child's Aid. The pizza guy glances out of his shades at the other little kid prying his fingers off the handle of the wagon he and his co-workers had found abandoned by the dumpster out back.

Out of nowhere, a book comes sailing through the air, rotating so fast it looks more a navy-and-white spinning plate. Before their eyes, it knocks the topmost box of pizza off the stack, hefts the box up onto itself, and turns mid-flight into a wide arc, back to once it had came, as though fleeing the indignant yells of youths.

Over in the farthest-left wing of the second story of the library, where rectangles of fluorescent lights have degraded to naked bulbs dangling from the ceiling tiles, where the ugly, varicolored carpet has gradually been worn down to nearly its fundamental threads, a girl with a ponytail the color of newborn girls' nurseries has a book tucked under each of her crossed legs, two more stacked up abreast to her, and her hands close together the way people do to light cigarettes. Once, twice, thrice... Out of the better-lit foreparts steps a boy with a grin that makes people want to spit, "Go eat shit!" in the wearer's face. And on his person, a grease-stained box. With a casual flick of the wrist, it slides to her feet; a half-pepperoni/half-mushroom wheel is vouchsafed to her.

"Your magic not working?" He asks, but the corners of his grin did drop a bit, too subtle to be picked up by someone who didn't know him. Her narrowed eyes watch him as he sits down in front of her, rotating the box so the lid faces her instead. He rips himself a two merged slices and starts chewing up the long string of excess cheese.

Yin tears a precise wedge out and moves it forward onto the lid, her plate. She takes one of the books under her knees, the one she had come to sit upon moments before her brother had appeared, plops it by his own leg.

"Glad to see your proficiency is seemingly intact," she seethes.

"Sucks to suck," he replies with a high, helpless shrug. With a mouth full of cheese and meat, "Wha' book 're you readi'?"

"_The Fabric of the Cosmos,_ by this guy named Brain Greene. If it's really about the 'texture of the reality'—"

"—and not somehow about tacos, like that last "public school" textbook we had." Hey, Master Y...Dad (the panda in question would never admit to almost accidentally writing that on a check once), couldn't legally homeschool them while teaching only WooFoo, which made a few days out of the year far worse for Yang than others, as Yo would collect up the Y Cube and all other sources of boyish joy and hide them better than politicos do their corruption.

Yin shares his remembering smile and rolls her eyes exaggeratedly enough to pop them out. "—yeah, exactly. If it's an all useful, I'll either have a theory about: a) why I can't use my magic; b)why we're humans; or most importantly, where the flipping Foo we are." (Remember earlier, when he couldn't tell whether Yin was fourteen or six? Yeah.)

Yang swallows the remaining half of his slices, and lines his hands together fingerprint against corresponding fingerprint, and drawls to her with an air of faux, unimpressed coolness, "So what do you_ theorized_ happened?"

A cute titter. "Sometimes I forget you can even read. I thought for sure you'd end up calling his partner and breaking them up."

A brief middle finger comes the response. "I have a few extra senses. If a word —it doesn't matter what's it's in —if it's at all related to pizza, or just food in general, I can sense it. Like a shark."

Giggle-snort.

"But, back to business, what do you theorized happened?"

She smiles at him for a second. "Ah, well, this morning my first thought was that it could be like it is on Osraighe (1), an' we've just been were'd— were-I-fied— er, whatever you call it. Or:—and this is merely a single option, in case you somehow forgot— we're dead. Although, this place doesn't seem very hellish."

"Limbo, maybe?"

"I hear that's pretty hellish, too. An' someone probably would've come us to us by now and told us what we're being punished for."

Elbows on the sides of blue jean knees, hands together. Yang inhales audibly, craning his neck up toward the ceiling. "Lord," he whispers, "please forgive me for getting to second base with Lena."

Yin rolls her eyes, and closes her hands as well. "Lord, please forgive me for putting that icy-hot in Yang's pants before the Venus dance."

Purple eyes, wide as the large pizza half-eaten in front of them. "You bitch," he says after a time, so softly she almost couldn't hear it.

"Sucks to suck!" She grabs the box and her book and runs off, and Yang watches her dash behind a book shelf, hears her footsteps turn right, but sits where he is. The sudden thoughts are keeping his muscles loose like ice cubes cooling warm soda.

So he'll ask later, and he picks up _John Dies At The End_, and begins to read.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

The head librarian from earlier drops the circlet of keys back into her purse, habitually giving one of the double doors a brief yank, which is loud enough for Yang to here from his crouch by the first floor boys' restroom on the other side of the room.

Now that the cats are away, this particular sewer rat needs a can of silly string and a lampshade and some sunglasses and a boom-box.

What he needs to do is ensure Yin won't be sleeping over her study materials again, see that the hat and money are still stuffed into her back pockets. Hey, this floor has some couches— more creaky boards with thin, rough fabric stapled onto them, but it'll hafta do.

Upstairs, Yin's eyes are underlined puffed, purplish-blue, and the lids growing more weighed down by the moment. About the table she had more or less claimed as her queen's desk, crumbled notebook paper of various sizes,— that which she must have gotten from rumbling through the little recycling bins— all about overflowing with words and doodles, are spread out like poker cards, and pieces of pencil, most about as long as erasers, are smushed side-by-side like a bar graph.

"You an' this new Greene guy off to a better start th'n the last one?" Yin ignores the tongue Yang is gently wagging closer and closer to her temple, standing behind her with his fingers on top of her crown. Her head thunks slightly on the table top, and maybe Yang hears a quick snore, maybe he doesn't, but she raises up and rests her chin on the heel of her hand.

Her lips curl up a tiny bit as she holds the open book up to her brother's visage, flipping back a couple chapters. "Just read this."

"Where?"

"You'll know."

In the second paragraph, Greene had wrote,_ "Whereas human intuition, and its embodiment in classical physics, envision a reality in which things are always definitely one thing _or_ the other, quantum mechanics describes a reality where things sometimes over in a haze of being partly one way _and_ partly another."(2)_

Yang walks a short distances away, deadpanning 'nope' a few times ere he jerks himself back to position. "Alright, so I was wondering: how 're you supposed to get out of Limbo?"

Yin, setting the paperbound back down, tapping the end of her pencil on the table as though it were a pen, replies, "The relatives are supposed to pray night and day for the salvation of the dead person's soul."

"Welp," —He smacks her shoulders— "we're fucked."

"_Yang."_ It sounds more weary than the tone she'd used both times earlier, to tell him not to try scale down the walls like a spider and while dragging him off the bronze tree statue out in front, as he was pulling down his fly (as he simply doesn't care anymore).

He gives his eyes a roll hard enough to stress the ropes holding them in. "Doesn't matter if we're dead."

She sets her own pupils back onto the text. "Oh, now you're so concerned?"

"Actually, if I wasn't locked up in the comic relief archetype, I'd have vomited out my skeletal system hours ago."

She deadpans, "Emotions, they burn."

"_Ugh, uh, _sports._ Hah, _beer. _Flush before I finish pee._ _**Man!**_

—oh, look!"

Yin glances over her shoulder. Her brother, finished pounding on his chest like a marching band drummer, has flexed his biceps, folding up his sleeve to reveal the skin of his forearm, slightly red in patches from the friction of the itchy sweaters, stretched taut over a bulge of muscle. If he was lucky back home, he'd get a little bump, like the last hill on a heart monitor before it flatlines.

"Go to bed, Yang." She's grinning. He has one more thing he wants to asks, but she turns her head back to her book, and then in a few more seconds it falls down to her chest, emitting snores loud enough to _definitely_ be real.

XXXXXXX

The small, high windows pour cups of moonlight down onto the library below, soaking the hair of a girl curled up to a thick sausage of a pillow on the median of three couches. On the upper quartile lays opened a box of pizza. It appears that whomever was sleeping on this one had taken a stiffer pillow than his counterpart over there, though the quality of comfort in both his options may actually be pretty close.

Out of earshot, there's the deep, crude clanking of a cowbell, only on half-volume.

It approaches, sounding again and again, each after pregnant pauses. The girl, when she hears it when the source is at her end of the stopgap bed, lets out a long, humming breath and bring a foot up to itch a spot on her calf.

If her senses were awake enough to take note of its tongue gliding the right side of her bangs, pulling the hair out from under her temple, it would only feel as though wide, calloused fingers had gently freed the locks. That in question begin standing tall, curved back like dry leaves.

There's a distant flush, light flooding in and then retreating, and a series of footsteps interrupted halfway.

Yang's main character arc begins right here, right now: with a semi-visible cow munching down on the last slice of pizza Yin had saved for him.

XXXXXXXX

(1) There's a tale in Irish folklore about the ancient kingdom of Ossory (also spelled Osraighe) where a curse would change a man and a woman into wolves for seven years, whereafter they would turn back into humans and another two people would be turned. I guess we all know what'd be in this case.

(2) Page 11 of Brian Greene's _The Fabric of the Cosmos: Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality,_ published by Vintage Books.


End file.
